Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/48

 he was thrown end over end on the grass. The dream was gone but he struck again and the shape fell, both ham-strings cleanly cut. Then he drove at the throat. In less than a minute from the first lunge he was tearing at the warm, quivering meat of a dead cow elk. A dream come true in part—he had led a phantom wolf pack to his first real kill.

Often at night Moran noticed his keen interest in every far off note, and he appeared to nose the air and tilt his ear as if to catch some scent or sound, the meaning of which was not clear to him.

Each morning they packed up and wandered on, making a new camp each night.

They moved up the Buffalo Fork of the Snake until one evening they stood in Two Ocean Pass. Moran could almost have tossed a chip from either hand, consigning each one to a different sea. They were in the very center of the Land of Many Rivers—the wonder spot of the world—and for fifty miles around there was no evidence of man.

Fifty miles to the south the nearest wagon road skirted the base of the Teton range: a like distance east of them the Sunlight Gap broke through the Rainbow Peaks to the scattered ranches of the Greybull; north they could see the Rampart Pass